Random Musings & Book Reviews

Archive for May, 2012

At the tail end of August 2012, I will have rounded out a full year of purging my house of all the things I don’t need, want, or use. This month has been a slow, but today and tomorrow I will hit my 50 free listings on one eBay account. I’ll start knocking some more out with the other account before the 31 May.

A chair and ottoman sold on Craigslist, but furniture sales have stagnated. A lot of no shows for additional furniture. I’ve hit almost 1100 items sold and donated since 28 August 2011. It is amazing to me how much a family of five can accumulate during 18 years in the same house. My biggest hurdle are books. I’m almost solely using my Kindle and I have a lot of books that I haven’t read yet, or that I wanted to keep; some of my favourites really. Plus my bookcase looks so naked and sad with my limited tangible book collection. But there is something visceral about the books I keep, not the ones I haven’t read; those I should just buy for the Kindle, but I’m too cheap to do so when I have the hardcovers.

But the ones I own because I cherish them. Those books matter, some are my own published works, others are favourite authors. That decision will just have to wait. This summer the car my daughter is driving will be sold, or so I hope. She can’t move into Uni housing until 30 August, so I have a delay of two days after my initial purge for more things to disappear with her, into the abyss of a college dorm room. Then there is the acquisition of new items for her foray in to adulthood; like serious luggage.

Those things aside, I’m starting to hit rock bottom with clothes. There will be more as the Mini Me grows. He’s gained 28# since August and four inches in height. Dressing a growing boy is a necessary evil. The DHs stomach is also broadening and we had to pick up a few XL shirts since his Large’s didn’t fit, all a bit too tight. I honestly think that the DH is going to have to start purging poundage. He has too many nice clothes for us to buy him a new, expanded (pun intended) wardrobe. For me, I’m the perpetual 20# overweight since I turned 40. Medifast is not for me. I have friends that swear by it, but several were over 100# overweight. I’m not there. My shirts fit, it’s my skirts that don’t.

So, as we head into summer with the advent of Memorial Day I still have to clean out my shoe closet, and then a huge purge when daughter heads to Uni. I’m sure there are plenty of crappy shirts she’ll want to dispose of, or at least I do hope. As for me, and DH, we’ll have to purge some weight.

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I’ve always been the questioning sort, but the prevalence of Christianity, in it’s numerous forms: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Protestantism, Presbyterianism, Methodists, Baptists, Church of Christ, has now turned my educated mind upside down.

I also follow a guy on twitter called @Godless_Atheist; mostly because he’s funny and Australian, and I’ve been reading newspaper articles about Americans who would rather say they are gay (even if they are not) instead of admitting to being an atheist; because they feel homosexuality is actually accepted more than atheism.

My questioning began with an innocuous post on Facebook by someone, with this photo:

Someone posted it, I thought it was cool an reposted it and a FB friend said she liked the photo but not the text. When asked why? she never responded.

Then I started making a list. I love lists, I have To-Do Lists, List of Movies to watch, Music to buy, etc; so why not a list of what I know and what I don’t regarding religion? It started with a conversation with the DH last night about the Bhagavad Gita, which I read a long time ago. Off the cuff, I stated that Hinduism was the first religion to bring in polytheism. I mean the Romans & Greeks were in there somewhere, but I was pretty sure it was the Hindus. Then Buddhism, then the Jews with their monotheism, then Christians with Jesus and The Holy Trinity as monotheism, then Muhammad.

My first stumbling block is that I am watching The Borgias. And I was thinking with the Papacy and Saints, why Catholicism is considered monotheistic. I realize there is one G-d, the Holy Trinity, But Catholics pray to Saints; which means to me that there is more to Catholicism than just G-d. Mary was just a woman, who supposedly had a virgin birth, and she is prayed to and revered.

That got me thinking, when do I remember the Bhagavad Gita was enacted? I know it was certainly thousands of years BC. In reality it was 2000 BC, with it being written, then I googled it, and it was actually 2500 BC; so I was 500 years off, not too bad of a memory.

However the Bhagavad Gita wasn’t put into writing until 200 BC, and Judaism, not in it’s complete 20th Century form, was about 2000 BC. Judaism started with Abraham. Then Moses and it took G-d over 1500 years to reveal the Old Testament.

So, how can Christians condemn Jews? Their version of monotheism was around a hell of a lot longer than the birth of Jesus, around 2-3 AD. With the New Testament being written about 38-95 AD and then Muhammad and Qur’an in about 575 AD. Muhammad came really far down the food chain of prophets in the monotheism cycle. It’s no wonder Jews and Moslems have problems. I always argue that the Jews were here first, so they should get Palestine, and just quit the fighting all ready.

That being said, atheism is a much newer construct. What I forgot to mention, is why people think all other gods are Pagan? That whole term confuses me. But if you said, in response to someone saying there is only one true G-d: “There is only one God,” What they really mean is, “There are lots of made up Gods, but one of them is real.” Well, that’s convenient.

My initial thought about Pagan gods was those of Celtic and Norse background. So, I plug Pagan in to google and find this statement: “Ethnologists often avoid the term “paganism,” with its uncertain and varied meanings, in referring to traditional or historic faiths, preferring more precise categories such as polytheism, shamanism, pantheism, or animism.” My documented source is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism

As an over-educated chick with three kids and a daughter that is finishing the rigors of a difficult, yet enlightening International Baccalaureate curriculum; where all these IB Diploma candidates believe they are better than the AP kids because they have to create an Extended Essay (a thesis pretty much), and their classes are way harder and they have to think a lot, and footnote every damn thing, I am citing my sources.

So, my second citation is where I found an actually yearly breakdown of religion, while writing this post, it can be found here: http://www.allaboutreligion.org/origin-of-religion.htm

Now, I don’t believe everything I read on the Internet, but most of this information I deem credible given my extended degrees and a lifelong interaction with Professors, lively inter-student discussion and a TON of reading. I don’t even know how many books I’ve read since I started reading at about age four. It’s probably in the billions. I know I’ve read the Torah, the Old Testament, The New Testament, the Qur’an, and LDSers Pearl of Great Price and those books. All more than once. I have the Bhagavad Gita on my Kindle for crying out loud!

So, why all the fuss? I will be exploring that over more posts to this blog.